Worth the Wait

While it might be true that life imitates art, I’m pretty sure that baseball imitates life. Saturday night might have been the longest nine-inning baseball game I’ve ever attended. The rain delays almost totaled the amount of playing time, leaving first pitch and final out five hours and four minutes from each other. But it was worth the wait.

With all of the frustration that surrounds rain delays, you have to respect the beauty of perseverance. And in retrospect, I couldn’t help but correlate that long, complicated game to the relationship we have with our loving God. Like the prodigal child, we are just a couple of rain delays away from the ultimate relationship with God.

After a 45 minute delay to start the game, the Rangers got off to a quick start and pulled ahead of the White Socks, but pre-game was not without incident. We actually drove out to the game twice. The first time the rain was so thick, so heavy that I knew for certain they wouldn’t be able to play. So, we did what any right-minded people would do… we turned around and went to dinner. Life’s like that though, our own self-doubt and preconceived notions can be real barriers in our relationships and experiences.

As we were finishing up dinner, I looked out the window and with surprise and exasperation told Mike, ‘I think I can see the sunshine.’ It was just a small patch of light, but I fully believe it’s the little things you have to pay closest attention to. Game on! So we made our second trek and arrived without a drop of rain on our heads.

So when the Rangers were up by eight runs after the forth inning I must say, we were pretty happy campers. That’s about when the thunder crashed and the rain started pouring down. Thank God for seats under the awning! Here comes the tarp – that rescuing blanket of protection. But it’s not an official game yet. If we call it off now, all nine runs would be wasted. Isn’t it amazing to know God never considers His time wasted on us? That’s just too human a reaction. He just sits by – patiently waiting out our personal thunderstorms.

Now any Rangers follower knows that there are times an eight run lead is not a strong enough cushion, but just this once it would be nice. A little tip-of-the-hat thank you to all the soggy, loyal fans. But almost immediately after the game resumes, the White Sox blast off a grand slam. Seriously? We don’t need this. Things were going just fine. Why do things need to get messed up? Is life trying to throw me off track? WHY?!!

Oh… baseball. Right. So what’s the answer? Bring on the rain. Just a little cleansing distraction. Stay focused. And five hours later, get the victory. And in the end, the victory will always be worth the wait.

In the end what matters is that we turn home in our hours of need. The rest works out. Ultimately, through all of our struggles, our ups and downs and our veering off path, God will love us any way. And each time we run back home to Him, He just opens His arms and says, ‘It was worth the wait.’